


The Roommate Game

by Kantayra



Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: Ensemble Cast, Friendship, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-06
Updated: 2011-08-06
Packaged: 2017-10-22 07:22:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/235418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kantayra/pseuds/Kantayra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hikaru and Waya were quite possibly the two strangest, dorkiest roommates of all time. Fortunately, they didn't care what anyone else thought, as long as they were playing tons of Go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Roommate Game

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Megan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Megan/gifts).



It had always been inevitable that one day it would come to this.

First of all, when Hikaru finally moved out of his parents’ house, it was only natural that he and Waya get an apartment together. After all, with their combined income, Waya could upgrade from his one-person shithole to a two-person not-quite-shithole.

“Do you, um, have any food with actual _nutrients_ in it?” Shigeko asked on the night of their housewarming party.

“Heh,” was all Waya could say in response to that.

It wasn’t that Waya and Hikaru didn’t want to take care of their place. It was just that with work at the Institute and training with Morishita Sensei and frequenting every single Go salon they could find and arguing until three in the morning who the all-time greatest player was, there wasn’t much time left for housekeeping.

“Uh…” Akari blanched one afternoon when she’d stopped by to catch Hikaru up on what was happening at home. “When was the last time you guys cleaned the bathroom?”

Hikaru and Waya both looked away shiftily.

It was normal for two young bachelors living alone.

“Is that mold?” Touya twitched.

Healthy, even.

“How did you manage to get mustard all over your kifu?” Isumi wondered.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t.

“We should probably clean up soon,” Hikaru finally conceded.

“All right, fine,” Waya agreed.

“Good.”

“So…”

“You start.”

“ _Me_? You’re the one who hasn’t gotten anything from the grocery store except ramen for the last month.”

“Oh yeah? Well, _you’re_ the one who leaves all your wet towels on the bathroom floor.”

“Only because _you_ leave your underwear on the towel racks!”

And this was how the inevitable cycle spiraled ever downward. Because it was a truth universally acknowledged that no two teenage boys living together _ever_ wanted to clean. It would take something powerful to break such mighty inertia.

***

“Are you sure there isn’t something living in that pile of dirty laundry? Because I’m sure I just saw it move.”

Gaping stares followed this pronouncement. Waya and Hikaru exchanged stunned looks. And then Waya yanked Hikaru by the arm back into his bedroom for an emergency council of war.

“We just got owned by _Ochi_!” Waya despaired. “ _Ochi_ , Hikaru!”

“The laundry is starting to smell,” Hikaru said somewhat sheepishly.

“No,” Waya ran his hands through his hair frantically, “you don’t understand. _Ochi_ owned us. Ochi doesn’t own at _anything_.”

Hikaru had to concede the universal truth in this. “We have to do something,” he agreed.

“But what?” Waya bemoaned.

But still, the first, important step was taken that day. Because no two teenage boys anywhere could bear the shame of being owned by Ochi for long.

***

Realizing that change was necessary and implementing change were two entirely different things, of course.

“You should make a list of chores and schedule them on your calendar,” Shigeko suggested. “Here, I’ll color-code it for you.”

“I, uh, mostly let my girlfriend worry about that sort of thing,” Isumi said unhelpfully.

“No, Hikaru, you are _not_ inviting your mom over to clean your apartment!” Akari ranted at Hikaru over the phone. “Don’t make me hit you!”

“Maybe you could hire a maid. Or a hazmat team,” Ochi said.

“He got us _again_!” Hikaru banged his head on the table.

“We have to do something!” Waya groaned.

“You should just play Go over who does the chores,” Touya suggested, like that was a solution that any sane person would ever implement.

***

“Okay, that’s it. We’re going to play Go over who does the chores,” Hikaru declared two weeks and multiple aborted cleaning attempts later.

“Oh god, can we get any more pathetic?” Waya sighed. “First, we got owned by Ochi, and now we’re taking advice from Touya.”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Hikaru insisted.

“All right.” Waya took a deep, fortifying breath. “First up is laundry.”

“Whose laundry? Yours or mine?”

“ _All_ the laundry,” Waya declared bravely.

Hikaru gulped. “I cannot lose this game.”

“ _I_ cannot lose this game,” Waya fired back.

Hikaru sat down before the goban, which was the only clean spot on their floor at the moment.

“Nigiri,” Waya said. “Let’s settle this once and for all.”

Hikaru ended up as black and Waya white. Hikaru groaned at the komi he had to overcome, but huge, smelly piles of laundry were on the line, and he couldn’t afford to lose this game. He started on the attack, but Waya was just as vicious. In fact, Hikaru and Waya had never played a game this intense before. Insei games, the pro exam, exhibitions, and pro games were _nothing_. This was about _laundry_ , and neither was willing to suffer such an epic loss.

Sweat beaded on their brows, breaths caught, and their concentration had never been greater. It came right down to yose, with each of them pulling ahead for one move only to lose their lead in the next. Finally, though, the game was played out between them, and Hikaru’s spirits sunk even before the counting officially began.

“I am the master!” Waya crowed. “You have to do the laundry for a month!”

“A month?” Hikaru objected. “We were just playing for the laundry that’s all over the place right _now_!”

“Yeah,” Waya stuck his tongue out at Hikaru. “But I figure that will take you a whole month.”

Hikaru balled up one of his old shirts and threw it at Waya’s head.

***

Things got stranger around the Go Institute after that point.

“ _This_ game is for the future of the fridge!” could be heard one day.

And then the next: “Ha ha, the toilet is _yours_!”

“I don’t even want to know,” was all Touya said when Saeki finally asked him what was going on.

“Their place does look marginally better these days,” Isumi conceded.

The _real_ benefit, however, was seen the next time Waya and Ochi had a game scheduled against each other. Hikaru was concentrating on his own game, of course, but even he noticed when Ochi conceded just before noon.

At lunch, Waya was triumphant. “All that practice is really paying off, Shindou. Who’s owning who now?”

Hikaru snickered. “So, are you still too chicken to challenge me for the kitchen?”

“It is on!” Waya cheered. “Speed Go, right here, right now.”

Waya lost the kitchen, but the battle continued.

“Have you noticed that the two of them have been a bit, er, _strange_ lately?” Shigeko asked Akari one Sunday afternoon when Hikaru and Waya had all their friends over at what was – shockingly – now an entirely habitable apartment.

Akari snorted. “They’re boys, living alone. They’d be strange if they _weren’t_ strange.”

“Soda spill!” Hikaru cried out. “Nine-by-nine game to determine who has to wipe it up!”

“Oh, for crying out loud…” Isumi sighed and wiped up his own soda spill.

Waya played Hikaru anyway, and Hikaru ended up having to vacuum the sofa after their guests had left.

***

As with all things, however, the novelty soon wore off. Waya and Hikaru still played their games, of course, because those were fun. But the lag time between defeats and the time punishment chores were actually carried out lengthened and lengthened.

“You lost on the dishes last week,” Waya complained one day.

“I’m getting around to it,” Hikaru insisted.

“They’re starting to get fuzzy…”

Hikaru glared up at him. “I’ll do it when you finally take out the trash you lost to me Tuesday.”

That shut Waya up quickly enough.

“ _Boys_ ,” Akari sighed when this latest trend became apparent in their housekeeping.

“So predictable,” Shigeko agreed.

***

“All right,” Waya declared one day. “We can’t keep this up anymore. Ochi’s had an increasingly smug look on his face lately. He’s gearing up to sass us again, I just know it.”

“Fine,” Hikaru agreed, putting his online opponent’s group in atari. Technically, he was supposed to be picking up the stuff they’d scattered all over the bathroom floor, but Hikaru had his priorities. “But how are we supposed to fix this mess?”

“We’ll have to up the stakes,” Waya concluded solemnly.

Hikaru gulped. “You don’t mean…”

“That’s right. No online Go until we finish our punishment chores.”

“But that’s like two punishments in one!” Hikaru insisted in wide-eyed horror.

“Something needs to be done,” Waya said gravely.

Hikaru nodded sadly. “We should probably add no Go salons, either.”

Waya twitched. “B-But…how will we survive?”

Hikaru looked at Waya.

Waya looked at Hikaru.

And they both broke out laughing at the same time.

“Fine, fine,” Hikaru closed the lid of their communal laptop with a snap. “I’m picking up the mess in the bathroom.”

Waya’s hand inched toward the now-vacant computer.

“And _you’re_ throwing out all the bad food in the fridge,” Hikaru chided him.

“So that means…”

“Whoever finishes first…”

“Gets to play Go online tonight!” they both realized simultaneously.

Never had two teenage boys cleaned an apartment faster.

***

“This is kind of spooky,” Shigeko said next time they were over at Hikaru and Waya’s together.

Akari just nodded numbly.

“It’s to be expected,” Touya said calmly. “The ‘no Go’ rule is the most effective way to get a house cleaned. How do you think my mother got father to keep the house spotless all these years?”

 _Everyone_ gaped at Touya and this bizarre window into Touya Meijin’s home life that, honestly, everyone had probably been happier not knowing.

“What?” Touya asked, confused.

***

In the end, the roommate game had achieved what millions of years of evolution, nagging mothers, and public shame could not: kept a bachelor pad clean.

“I want to play this guy from Seoul tonight,” Hikaru announced. “Let’s play for mopping the floors.”

“I need to chat with some of my friends in Europe,” Waya would say the next day. “I think someone needs to scrub the windows.”

“This is very disturbing,” Isumi decided.

“It’s lucky they’re each other’s roommates,” Ochi agreed. “No one else would have them.”

“Quiet!” Waya hissed.

“We’re playing for scrubbing the oven!” Hikaru chided.

“They just don’t know what’s fun,” Waya concluded when the two of them were left alone once more to finish their game.

“And, just to make it _more_ fun, whoever loses has to clean the oven wearing that frilly apron my mother bought me for who-only-knows what reason,” Hikaru challenged.

Waya’s eyes widened. “The one with the pink and the lace?”

Hikaru grimaced. “That’s the one.”

“I am _not_ losing this game,” Waya concluded.

“Well, neither am I,” Hikaru countered.

And then they both burst out laughing again. Because it didn’t matter that no one else understood; Hikaru and Waya were both convinced they had the best roommate agreement _ever_ , and nothing and no one could ever change that.


End file.
